


the greatest

by blerghie



Series: the tenth [1]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 19:58:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14386032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blerghie/pseuds/blerghie
Summary: She's wearing a red dress that fits awfully on her with four-inch stilettos that make her wobble when she walks. She's watched Bianchi do this dozens of times. She can handle this. Probably.(or, Tsuna is a girl, and here are the differences.)





	the greatest

**Author's Note:**

> Btw don’t take it too seriously, it's unbeta'd and I wrote all of this for fun hehe.
> 
> A warning, though: I didn't tag everything (quite frankly I'm very very very unsure of my tagging skillz) so proceed with a bit of caution, thank you.

[i.]

Tsuna is twenty-four years old, and she’s just a tiny bit upset.

“I really don’t enjoy torture,” Tsuna tells the man in front of her, sat on a metal chair with her legs crossed, hands prim on her lap, lightly toying with the fabric of her skirt. “I despise it, in fact. The pleasure at seeing others in pain suits the personalities of my older guardians—you know them: Kyouya-san, Mukuro-kun—more than they suit my own. You know this well, Alessandro.”

Alessandro glares at her with his dark brown eyes, full of intense anger, which really speaks of his bravado, considering that he is tied to a metal chair, arms and legs unusable, with a piece of cloth shoved into his mouth, courtesy of Gokudera-kun, and inside an empty interrogation room with only Tsuna as his company. Reborn watches from a two-way mirror—he can ignore it all he likes, but even when Tsuna’s already twenty-four and the boss of the strongest underground organization in the world, he still can’t help but act like some overbearingly protective papa.

Tsuna turns her full attention back to the man in front of her. “But, Alessandro,” she says, her voice solemn, “you must know what rivals my hatred of torture. As much as Reborn calls me weak, naïve, soft-hearted, useless, all of that—though his words are meaningless to me nowadays, quite frankly—” she waves her hand offhandedly, pointedly ignoring the sudden thumping noise from the other side of the two-way mirror, “but despite that, I am rather capable in handling things when it comes to the safety of my own famiglia, if I do say so myself.”

Tsuna stands, then, and circles Alessandro. Carefully, she removes the cloth in his mouth and lets it drop to the tiled floor. Alessandro coughs and exhales heavily, his shoulders shaking.

And then he curses at her.

“Vongola will die, especially with an ignorant cunt like you trying to lead it,” he says with a sneer. “You’ll _fail,_ you’ll watch us raze it to the ground, and there won’t be anyone left for you to cry about, you fucking chink!”

“Ah, well,” Tsuna clears her throat, crouching behind Alessandro to take hold of one of his trembling fingers, “that’s not very nice of you to say, Alessandro. Not to mention cliché. And after your side-along interrogation sessions with Kyouya-san—what did you call us again? A fucking _chink?_ —before your betrayal, I didn’t expect such things from your mouth.” She takes out the whittling knife she usually hides in her left heel, brandishing it in her palm. “But you were a traitor from the beginning, so I suppose my standards had been too high as it was.”

She starts with the pinky finger.

 

[ii.]

Tsuna is thirteen years old, and she meets her new home tutor.

“Why didn’t you go to the nurse, you idiot” is what Reborn says when he first makes contact with Sawada Tsunayoshi. There’s a small bruise beneath her left eye and red on her knuckles where the scratches were too shallow to break the skin.

“Who the hell are you” is what Sawada Tsunayoshi says in reply. And promptly tries to punch him.

(There’s a keyword in there. A hint: she misses.)

Reborn backhands her after dodging her sorry excuse of a punch, watches her cradle her throbbing red cheek in her hand, and tells her, “I don’t know why those boys didn’t win against punches like that. Your town must be housing exceptionally weak humans.”

 

[iii.]

Tsuna is ten years old.

Tsuna likes sandcastles, cats, the sky, burning people who try to hurt Mama, fairytales, Sasagawa Kyoko, and Salisbury steak.

Tsuna dislikes dresses, the color pink, people who try to hurt Mama, bats, slugs, and academics.

Tsuna is a simple girl.

 

[iv.]

Tsuna is sixteen, and her first honeypot mission goes like this:

It’s a seedy bar in the south of Germany where hitmen, traffickers and Mafiosi go for deals and drinks—a neutral area. The target is in his mid-40s with a particular fondness for beautiful teenage girls. She’s wearing a red dress that fits awfully on her with four-inch stilettos that make her wobble when she walks. She’s wearing earrings that contain a tracking and communication device in one, a necklace that contains poison in its gems, and her black thigh-highs that transform into her X-Boots.

She’s watched Bianchi do this dozens of times. She can handle this.

Probably.

“Isaac Petrov,” Bianchi’s voice whispers from her earrings. Tsuna straightens, leans on the bar counter a bit, covertly looking around. “Northwest of you, drinking alone with a brandy. The man in an all-black three-piece suit, long dark hair, green eyes. Ooh, he’s a cute one. Cuteness doesn’t justify immorality, though.”

“B-Bianchi—“ Tsuna stutters.

“Go get him, pussycat,” Bianchi says encouragingly. “He’s already staring at you—oh, he’s coming, that disgusting freak; those are ‘fuck me’ eyes, I swear—“

When Tsuna turns, she hits a solid wall of muscle underneath a three-piece Armani suit. She stares up and watches Isaac Petrov smile at her, sweet and kind, no hint of malice on his person. Belatedly, she realizes she’s trapped between him and the edge of the bar counter.

“Hello, young lady,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a bit too young to be in this type of establishment?”

Bianchi mutters, “Creep.”

“I’m twenty-one,” Tsuna says. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ears so the earrings aren’t blocked, and she should do that thing Bianchi does—pout her lips, flutter her lashes—but she knows it’d look awkward on her, knows she’d never pull it off the way Bianchi does with her easy grace and sexuality.

Petrov clearly knows she’s lying, but he smiles anyway, a half-smile that looks more like a smirk. “Really, now?” he says, humming a low sound from his throat. He offers her the bar stool, tells her to sit down and relax. “You seem quite lonely. I’ll be happy to provide a lovely lady with some company until her companion arrives.”

“Oh,” Tsuna says, sounding surprise, even though she’s really not. “Thank you.” She takes the seat and watches him do the same, watches him call the bartender and order a beer and a margarita. Tsuna would prefer a soda, in all honesty. “I—I’m not actually waiting for anyone, though,” she says, shyly.

Petrov’s lips part. “Oh?”

“I just wanted to be alone for a while—enjoy the city away from my parents,” Tsuna says.

Bianchi laughs in her ear. “You deserve an Oscar, pussycat,” she says.

The bartender arrives with a beer and a margarita in tow. “For you, darling,” Petrov says, offering the margarita to Tsuna. He gives a winsome smile, lightly touches Tsuna’s bare shoulder, twirls the tips of her hair.

“I, um.” Tsuna bites her lip, touches a hand to the middle of her chest, sweet, demure. The lip bite is an act and she’s detaching one of the gems for its poison, but the blush spreading on her nose is not. Not that she’d tell that to Bianchi, especially when she literally just saw Petrov dropping a pill into the margarita.

He’s just—attractive. Attractive in the same way Robert Downey, Jr. is attractive, or Hugh Jackman, or Koshi Inaba. He aged _very_ well.

Christ.

“Anything wrong?” Petrov says, leaning into her space.

Tsuna fights the instinct to recoil, meeting him halfway instead. She looks at him directly, watching as his eyes devour every inch of her body and she has to fight against the horrific shudder that tingles across her body. Attractive or not, it feels as though it’s her _father_ leering at her.

“I—I’m not actually twenty-one,” she whispers, rights hand curling over his bicep. “I-I just turned sixteen. Please don’t tell.” Petrov’s eyes dilate. Tsuna’s left hand is already dropping powderized Rohypnol into his glass of beer before hiding the gem in the closed palm of her hand.

“Your secret’s safe with me, dear,” Petrov promises, taking the hand on his bicep and rubbing comfortingly over her knuckles. “It’s good to relax once in a while, especially when you’re still a teenager, and you selflessly carry your problems on your shoulders. I remember when I was as young as you—everything had been a burden, too much for me to carry.”

‘Is he patronizing me’ is what Tsuna thinks to that dramatic monologue. Petrov pauses, takes a tiny gulp of his beer, and tells her, “How about a toast?”

“A toast?”

Petrov takes both drinks in hand, offers her the margarita, which she accepts with one hand, and raises his beer, staring at her so intensely that Tsuna kind of wants to run away. “To youth,” he says. “To life, beauty, love, and—ah, relaxation, of course.” He gives a slight laugh, and says, “To you, dear. A refreshing breath of air in such a stifling environment.”

Oh, that was a good one. Tsuna smiles, says, “O-oh, thank you, sir.”

“Call me Isaac, darling.”

“Th-then thank you, Isaac.”

They clink their glasses together and drink at the same time. Tsuna keeps her lips closed and mimics gulping the margarita before putting it down on the bar counter.

Petrov puts his beer down, and blinks once, twice, thrice. “What did you say your name was?” he says, voice slurring by the end.

Tsuna smiles. “Tsuna. Tsunayoshi Sawada.”

“Fuck,” Petrov says. He tries to stand but ends up crumpling to the ground, his breathing turning soft and even.

“Good job, pussycat,” Bianchi says. Tsuna almost forgot she was there.

“Thanks. I hated it.”

The other patrons of the bar are staring now, but no one actually makes a move. And they don’t seem to actually care to make a move. The Reborn inside her head tells her that they’re memorizing her face, her clothes, her body, her _name_ —this is for their future reference.

Oh well. Her official induction as Vongola Decimo will be in two years anyway. Everyone would know all about her, sooner or later.

This bar is so seedy. She turns to the bartender. “Can I be the one to pay for the tab?” she says, smiling sweetly. “I’m afraid my friend is a bit of a lightweight.”

The bartender assesses her for a moment, eyes narrowing, but says, “Sure. The bastard hasn’t paid his tab for six months, just so you know.”

“That’s doable.” Vongola’s rich as hell. Six months of beers and margaritas won’t be much.

Hopefully.

 

[v.]

Tsuna is fourteen years old, but she feels like she’s too old with the weight of the world resting on her shoulders.

“I don’t want anyone to die,” she tells Reborn one night, where everyone’s asleep and her cheeks are wet with salty, salty tears. “I just want everyone safe. I want to go back to the past—to Mama. I m-miss her.”

It’s the first time she’s cried since she was—five? Six? She doesn’t remember—and it makes her feel helpless, useless—some weak little girl who bit off more than she could chew, and all the little things the bullies in her school would say return to her head and dig deep into her brain— _useless, worthless, No Good Tsuna, Dame-Tsuna, useless, no good, no good—_

“Self-pity’s not going to return you to the past,” Reborn says, and there’s none of that playful insulting tone he always uses with her. “You’re going to be the boss of Vongola—“

“Vongola is already in ruins, Reborn,” she says. She wipes the tears off of her cheeks, and her eyes feel swollen, and she _hates, hates, hates Byakuran for this mess—_

“In this world,” Reborn says. “In this future.” He’s quiet for a moment, watching her scrub furiously at her eyes. “Byakuran had made a fatal mistake, you know.”

Tsuna looks to him. “What?”

“You’re still alive,” Reborn says, simply. “And stupid as you are, you never give up even when everything’s stacked against you.”

“I—“

“And besides, you _need_ to survive. You still haven’t confessed to—“

_“Shut—shut up!”_

Tsuna ducks into the thin blankets provided by the facility and screams curses at him until she tires of it and falls asleep.

 

Later into the night, Reborn thinks, _don’t give up on me now, kid. Put that protectiveness of yours to use._

 

[i.]

Tsuna had flayed off Alessandro’s left and right pinky before he so graciously talks of his organization, its executives, and its boss. He’s crying a bit and he screams out his answers, but, well, as Reborn calls it—semantics.

She stands and wipes off the blood from her whittling knife with a swipe of her forefinger.

“I hope you understand, Alessandro,” Tsuna says to the man, who looks away from her, sputtering and shaking, “that this is as personal as it is business. If you hadn’t struck something so close to me, I would have just let Ryohei-senpai handle your interrogation.” She tucks the little knife back into her heel. “Be that as it may, I am easily provoked in regards to these sort of things.”

Alessandro says, “I—I—“

“Please allow me some silence and shut the fuck up.” She’s getting rather restless, her feet tap-tap-tapping on the tiled floor, the sound reverberating in the empty room. “Ah—I’m so angry.”

She raises a foot, places it flat on his chest, and she knows he can feel the sharpness of the heel against his abdomen if his writhing is to go by, but she won’t stab him, no.

“If I find Lambo in the hospital again, I will burn your organization to the ground. For now, you’ll have to do.”

Her thigh-highs turn into her X-Boots, metal and leather wrapping around her legs, and the sole of her foot starts to emit concentrated flames.

Alessandro starts to scream.

Tsuna _pushes,_ and his chest sizzles and caves inward. The smell of burning flesh wafts through the air as Tsuna pushes her foot deeper into his chest until there’s nothing left but a cauterized cavity.

Alessandro stops screaming. Tsuna dutifully removes her foot and returns the X-Boots back into thigh-highs.

“Reborn,” Tsuna says.

The intercom in the room is staticky when on, but Reborn’s voice is clear. “Yes, Decimo?”

“Get a bunch of cleaners in the room. It smells terrible.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll be gone for the day.”

“Of course.”

Tsuna stares at Alessandro’s corpse, at the gaping emptiness in his chest, at his open eyes, staring into the ceiling.

“I’ll be in the hospital if you need me.”

“Of course.”

She can’t find it in herself to feel sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> That was fun to write! Especially the honeypot and the Alessandro scenes, judging by their lengths huehuehue. I might turn this into a oneshot series because I kind of have more ideas for this AU ;)))
> 
> This is also posted on FFNet under the same name and title and all that jazz.


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